Pakistan army not engaging al Qaeda

Guradian:

The Pakistani army is paralysed by the growing Taliban threat and some retired officers are covertly aiding the militants, according to a former CIA officer.

Soldiers posted to Waziristan, a tribal area that hosts an estimated 2,000 al-Qaida fighters, are "huddling in their bases, doing nothing", said Art Keller, a CIA case officer who was posted to Pakistan last year.

"Their approach was to pretend that nothing was wrong because any other approach would reveal that they were unwilling and unable to do anything about Talibanisation," said Mr Keller, who has visited Waziristan.

The Pakistani military insists it is doing its best. President Pervez Musharraf has repeatedly referred to the 80,000 soldiers posted to the tribal areas, about 700 of whom have been killed in action.

But Mr Keller said that behind the scenes the fight was riven by divisions among the officers. "There are the moderates who fear Talibanisation, the professional jihadis who want to embrace the Taliban again, and the middle group who aren't too fond of the Taliban but resent doing anything under pressure from the US out of sheer bloody-minded stubbornness," he said. "Because of [that], the Pakistani military remains paralysed."

Mr Keller alleged that retired army officers, including the former spy chief Hamid Gul, were secretly supporting the Taliban. "To the degree that they aren't arrested or forced to cease and desist, they are tacitly tolerated," he said. Gen Gul, who has faced similar accusations before, said last night: "I morally support the movement to end the American occupation of Afghanistan. But there is no physical dimension to it, no hidden agenda."

Mr Keller's comments come at a sensitive time in US-Pakistani relations. Since 2001 Washington has given Pakistan $10bn (£5bn) in exchange for counter-terrorism cooperation. But although hundreds of al-Qaida figures have been arrested, Osama bin Laden remains at liberty and Taliban attacks on Afghanistan have soared.

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The US is not getting its money's worth out of Pakistan in the fight with al Qaeda. In part it is the reluctance to engage, but that also springs from the fact that the army has not performed very well in the fire fights it has had with the Taliban and al Qaeda. Perhaps they could perform better if they were supplemented with US special forces troops, but the Pakistanis are too proud to agree to the assistance. If the situation deteriorates further, NATO may have to step in. This will be bad news for the tribal leaders because they will feel bound to protect al Qaeda and the Taliban. That could turn into a very deadly obligation. The forces across the border in Afghanistan can be used in part for this task, since they are already fighting many of the same people who have made cross border raids, but more forces would be needed to get an adequate force to space ratio to find bin Laden and Zawahiri.